Isle of the Thunder King, Patch 5.2 Daily Quests, PTR Class Balance, Weekly Roundup

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Patch 5.2 - Isle of the Thunder King
The Isle of the Thunder King is the new daily quest area in Patch 5.2, as well as where the Throne of Thunder raid is located. You used to be able to get there from a portal in your faction's capital in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, but the most recent PTR build moved it to near the Shado-Pan Garrison in Townlong Steppes. The entire island is restricted to ground mounts only.

Upon arrival, you are in your faction's base, with daily quests and vendors. As Dave Kosak reminded everyone, many things could still be placeholders, as this is still the PTR.

In the Horde base, there is a quartermaster there for the new faction, but currently it is just Vasarin Redmorn as a placeholder, as well as Aethas, and some other familiar faces. There is also a portal back to Shado-Pan Garrison.

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Over in the Alliance base, you find the Kirin Tor, The Silver Covenant, Jaina, and Image of Archmage Vargoth, along with some other familiar faces.

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After picking up your daily quests, you cross the bridges to the main island area. On your way out, you can grab a 60 second haste increase and power cost reduction buff from one of the Mana Collectors. This area is guarded by Silvermoon Spellbreakers and Sunreaver Constructs.

Throughout the island, there are several rare mobs that can drop a stone that is used to summon a mob that requires a group to defeat. You can also find the stones in the various chests that spawn across the island, similar to the Ancient Guo-Lai Cache.

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The center of the island is the Diremoor, which contains several types of quest mobs, including a wandering Devilsaur and mob in the center building to kill that are quest objectives.

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Moving further north, you will find the area that is outside of the Throne of the Thunder King. It is also used for questing, as well as the new world Boss, Nalak.

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To the west of Diremoor is the Court of Bones, another questing area. Several scouts from your faction have been captured and kept prisoner in these ruins.

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The southwest corner of the island is Trolltonshire, a questing area with trolls! Be sure to watch for circles on the ground that mark the constant bombings from the Zandalari Skyscreamer flying above. You can use the Zandalari Potions that are sitting around the camps for a buff like Jaguar Ferocity, Jaguar Speed, or Jaguar Stalker.

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The southeast corner of the island has been taken over by the Saurok, and questing there gives you a Saurok disguise that allows you to run at ground mount speeds and jump much higher and farther than normal.

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Patch 5.2 Daily Quests
Patch 5.2 adds many new quests on the Isle of The Thunder King. Keep in mind that it is still early in the PTR, so several quests still have placeholder names. You can see all of the new quests on WoWDB.

• Alliance
• Horde

Level	Name	Objective
90	Kill Guards/Players
90	Superpower/activate perimeter wards
90	Ashes of the Enemy	Burn 8 Mummified Remains.
90	Soul Surrender	Save 8 Silver Covenant Scouts.
90	Grave Circumstances	Kill 10 Lei-Shen Gravekeepers, Lei-Shen Soulrippers, or Lei-Shen Thundercallers.
90	Into the Crypts	Use the Incantation of Gura in the Hall of the Wicked, then defeat Gura the Reclaimed.
90	The Call of Thunder	Stop the Lei-Shen Thundercallers' ritual.
90	The Bloodletter	Kill Kaida the Bloodletter.
90	The Conquest of Stone	Disrupt the Ancient Stone Conqueror ritual in the main temple at the Court of Bones.
90	Rise No More!	Kill 15 Risen Ancestors.
90	Stone Cold	Destroy 8 Grave Guardians.
90	The Skumblade Threat	Slay 10 Skumblade saurok.
90	Learning from the Saurok	Check in with Magister Arlan, Magister Sarien, and Magistrix Vesara.
90	The Dinosaur-Men Stoled Our Magical Robots	Recover the four stolen Silver Covenant Constructs.
90	Heinous Sacrifice	Destroy the Zandalari Sacrificial Altars.
90	Dark Offerings	Destroy 6 Zandalari Offerings.
90	Harbingers of the Loa	[PH] Defeat 2 Harbingers of the Loa
90	Preventing a Future Threat	Frighten 20 Pterodactyl Hatchlings by running near them.
90	Surgical Strike	Slay 3 Zandalari Spiritbinders, 3 Zandalari Beastcallers, and 3 Zandalari Jaguar Warriors.
90	[PH] Dangers of Trolltonshire	Slay 12 Trolls in Trolltonshire
90	Pterrible Ptorment	Free the Tormented Pterodactyl.
90	The Residents of Ihgaluk	Slay a Skumblade Brute, a Skumblade Saur-Priest, and a Skumblade Seadragon.
90	Just Some Light Clean-Up Work	Disperse 75 pieces of filth by killing Quivering Filth in Ihgaluk Crag.
90	The Creeping Carpet of Ihgaluk	Crush 150 Ihgaluk Roaches.
90	Left To Rot	Destroy 3 Fetid Meat Piles.
90	Saur Loser	Defeat 10 Zandalari trolls in the Bestiary of Jalak.
90	Compy Stomp	Kill 5 Raptors and 10 Trained Compies in the Beast Pens.
90	Loa-saur	Defeat a Loa Speaker.
90	Direhorn vs Devilsaur	Disrupt a binding ritual by killing all ritual NPCs around either a Defiant Direhorn or a Defiant Devilsaur.
90	Dino Might	Find and use Saur Fetishes on 5 raptors, compies, skyscreamers or direhorns in the Beastiary of Jalak.
90	Centuries in Sentries	Kill 5 Spirit-Bound Sentries and then use the Resonance Crystal to capture the Zandalari spirits trapped within.
90	The More You Know	Retrieve 6 Ritual artifacts from around [Troll War Camp].
90	Out of Enemy Hands	Steal 7 Loa-Infused Blades from the [Troll War Camp].
90	All In the Family	Retrieve the Mask of the Dark Mystic and the Mask of the Spirit-Caller from Spiritbinder Tu'chek and Arcanital Ra'kul.
90	Even Giants Fall	Destroy Guardian Tak'u within the [Troll War Camp].
90	Keep It Secret	Kill any 8 Zandalari trolls within the [Troll War Camp].
90	Trailing Light in the Dark	Relight 8 torches in the Diremoor.
90	Gather Scout Reports
90	Recover Thunderwing Juvenile
90	Eyes in the Fog	Kill 6 Creeping Moor Beasts.
90	Saurok Roamers
90	The Shuddering Moor	Kill the Fascist Devilsaur.
90	Kill Giant Statue
90	At the Tower's Base	Kill [Zandalari Arcane Caster].
90	Imposing Threat	Kill [Mogu Chain Master].
90	Among the Bones	Kill [Zandalari w/ Raptors].
90	Competing Magic	Kill XXX.
90	Encroaching Force	Kill [Zandalari War Party].
90	Chains of Command	Kill XXX.
90	Raining Bones	Kill [Zandalari w/ Raptors].
90	Zandalari on the Rise	Kill [Zandalari Arcane Caster].
90	Enroaching Force
90	Chains of Command
90	Maximum Capacitor	Destroy the 3 lightning drills in the Ghost Iron Mines, and kill Metal Lord Mono-Han.
90	Forge Ahead!	Kill the Master of the Forge and Collect a Codex Fragment from the Mogu Gatekeeper in the Isle of the Thunder King.
90	On Her Magic-ey Secret Service	Rescue the three captured Kirin Tor Agents within the Ghost Iron Mines, and kill Metal Lord Mono-Han.
90	Subtle Encouragement	Plant Mogu Weapons into the corpses of 9 Skumblade saurok.
90	Loot plans, kill boat captain
90	Kill mogu boss for key, use object behind jumping puzzle

Level	Name	Objective
90	Dangers of Trolltonshire	Slay 12 Trolls in Trolltonshire
90	Grave Circumstances	Kill 10 Lei-Shen Gravekeepers, Lei-Shen Soulrippers, or Lei-Shen Thundercallers.
90	Kill Trolls
90	Kill Mogu Spirits
90	The Skumblade Threat	Slay 10 Skumblade saurok.
90	Gather Scout Reports
90	This Just Won't Do	Kill any 8 Zandalari trolls within the [Troll War Camp].
90	Saur Loser	Defeat 10 Zandalari trolls in the Bestiary of Jalak.
90	Maximum Capacitor	Use the Arcane Capacitor when it is overcharged to destroy the 3 lightning drills in the Ghost Iron Mines, and kill Metal Lord Mono-Han.
90	Save Our Scouts!	Rescue the three captured Sunreaver Agents within the Ghost Iron Mines, and kill Metal Lord Mono-Han.
90	Kill mogu boss for key, use object behind jumping puzzle
90	Nalak the Storm Lord	[PH] Kill Nalak [Log Description]
90	Kill Guards/Players
90	Heinous Sacrifice	Destroy the Zandalari Sacrificial Altars.
90	Pterrible Ptorment	Free the Tormented Pterodactyl.
90	Dark Offerings	Destroy 6 Zandalari Offerings.
90	Ashes of the Enemy	Burn 8 Mummified Remains.
90	Stone Cold	Destroy 8 Grave Guardians.
90	Soul Surrender	Save 8 Sunreaver Scouts.
90	Rise No More!	Kill 15 Risen Ancestors.
90	The Call of Thunder	Disrupt the Thundercaller's Ritual.
90	Into the Crypts	Use the Incantation of Gura in the Hall of the Wicked, then defeat Gura the Reclaimed.
90	Preventing a Future Threat	Frighten 20 Pterodactyl Hatchlings by running near them.
90	The Shuddering Moor	Kill the Fascist Devilsaur.
90	Kill Roaming Troll War Party
90	Kill Giant Statue
90	Trailing Light in the Dark	Relight 8 torches within the Diremoor.
90	What's Inside Counts	Destroy Guardian Tak'u in the [Troll War Camp].
90	Very Disarming	Steal 7 Loa-Infused Blades from the [Troll War Camp].
90	Knowledge Is Power	Retrieve 6 Ritual artifacts from around [Troll War Camp].
90	Harbingers of the Loa	[PH] Defeat 2 Harbingers of the Loa
90	REMOVE (No Longer Used)
90	Learning from the Saurok	Check in with Magister Arlan, Magister Sarien, and Magistrix Vesara.
90	The Dinosaur-Men Stoled Our Magical Robots	Recover the four stolen Sunreaver Constructs.
90	Release Prisoners (they turn into guardians? or they teleport home?)
90	Find scout near enemy camp (injured, port him back)
90	Steal magical tome from main building
90	Charged Moganite (NYI)	Recover a Charged Moganite and bring it to High Arcanist Savor.
90	Kill Arcane Elementals/Mana Wyrms (killing increases damange done and taken of nearby units)
90	Destroy enemy portal near camp (streaming attackers, defended, enemy can use)
90	Planting Bombs (NYI)
90	Destroy perimeter wards (green/blue eye of kilrog?)
90	Disarm mines near enemy camp (poke them with a stick =P)
90	Set magical mines around camp (using modern warfare lightning)
90	Start and defend summoning ritual near enemy camp
90	Destroy summoning circles in enemy camp (BloodElf_PowerOrb_Red)
90	The Residents of Ihgaluk	Slay a Skumblade Brute, a Skumblade Saur-Priest, and a Skumblade Seadragon.
90	Surgical Death	Slay 3 Zandalari Spiritbinders, 3 Zandalari Beastcallers, and 3 Zandalari Jaguar Warriors.
90	Metalocalypse	Kill Metal Lord Mono-Han outside the Ghost Iron Mine on the Isle of the Thunder King.
90	Fleshcrafter's End	Kill Fleshcrafter Goju outside the Ghost Iron Mines on the Isle of the Thunder King.
90	Compy Stomp	Kill 5 Raptors and 10 Trained Compies in the Beast Pens.
90	Loa-saur	Defeat a Loa Speaker.
90	Eyes in the Fog	Kill 6 Creeping Moor Beasts.
90	Kill Mogu Blood-seekers (Roaming pairs, actively fighting scouts, and performing rituals on corpses)
90	Saurok Roamers
90	Superpower/activate perimeter wards (zap enemy players/monsters coming towards camp)
90	Loot plans, kill boat captain
90	[PH] The Fall of Shan Bu	[PH] Kill Shan Bu [Log Description]
90	Forge Ahead!	Kill the Master of the Forge and Collect a Codex Fragment from the Mogu Gatekeeper in the Isle of the Thunder King.
90	Among the Bones	Kill XXX.
90	Raining Bones	Kill [Zandalari w/ Raptors].
90	Direhorn vs Devilsaur	Disrupt a binding ritual by killing all ritual NPCs around either a Defiant Direhorn or a Defiant Devilsaur.
90	Dino Might	Find and use Saur Fetishes on 5 raptors, compies, skyscreamers or direhorns in the Beastiary of Jalak.
90	Just Some Light Clean-Up Work	Disperse 75 pieces of filth by killing Quivering Filth in Ihgaluk Crag.
90	Find and deactivate bombs
90	Kill Constructs
90	Kill Enemy Lt.
90	Find glowing magical item stolen by dead scout in swamp (enemy w/ same target) (FloatingMineNexusPulse.mdx)
90	Destroy magical empowering devices
90	Test Your Chicken Guardian [PH]
90	The Creeping Carpet of Ihgaluk	Crush 150 Ihgaluk Roaches.
90	Left To Rot	Destroy 3 Fetid Meat Piles.
90	Destroy Cauldrons
90	They All Fall Down	Kill 5 Spirit-Bound Sentries and then use the Resonance Crystal to capture the Zandalari Spirits trapped within.
90	Power Play	Retrieve the Mask of the Dark Mystic and the Mask of the Spirit-Caller from Spiritbinder Tu'chek and Arcanital Ra'kul.
90	The Bloodletter	Kill Kaida the Bloodletter.
90	Recover Thunderwing Juvenile
90	The Conquest of Stone	Stop the Ancient Stone Conqueror ritual in the main temple at the Court of Bones.
90	Competing Magic	Kill XXX.
90	Encroaching Force	Kill [Zandalari War Party].
90	Chains of Command	Kill [Mogu Chain Master].
90	At the Tower's Base	Kill XXX.
90	Imposing Threat	Kill [Mogu Chain Master].
90	Enroaching Force
90	Zandalari on the Rise	Kill [Zandalari Arcane Caster].
90	Chains of Command
90	Subtle Encouragement	Plant Mogu Weapons into the corpses of 9 Skumblade saurok.

Patch 5.2 PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• The problem with Spirit Shell benefiting from mastery is that it changes Spirit Shell from "I want to bubble because we'll be hit by a lot of damage soon" to "I want to use Spirit Shell because my PoHs will be bigger." Once it is a throughput increase, then Spirit Shell loses some of its identity as a tool and it just becomes a cooldown. Now, we could just nerf Spirit Shell in some way ("you make a bubble weaker than a heal would have been") and then let mastery increase it back to base level again, but we would have to nerf it.
• On the topic of PW:Shield, back in say LK, the Disc play style was to tab through every target and PW:S them. It was effective, and boring. We wanted to move away from that and we were successful. However, PW:S is still supposed to be a core spell for Disc and we're seeing very little use of it on live. There should be room in the rotation for Spirit Shell, Prayer of Healing and Power Word: Shield and there isn't right now. This isn't a change in philosophy -- any time you see a spec using one spell or ability to the exclusion of others, you can assume we're probably not happy with that. As I said before, if you need to heal damage on a lot of players at once -- use Prayer of Healing. But if a lot of incoming damage is coming, you should probably PW:S several people and not use Prayer of Healing. On live, you'd still just use PoH because it's your best AE heal and your best AE absorb.

Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• For Enhance 2pc, it's possible that a Storm Strike may "overstack" Maelstrom Weapon. However, you can also choose to Lightning Bolt (or whatever) before the Storm Strike, knowing that you could get up to 4 charges.

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• The Protection 2pc will indeed count Divine Purpose boosted Words of Glory.

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• We have heard the concerns of Overpower inherent dodge avoidance in addition with dodge proc'ing Overpower might do strange things with Expertise. We are considering changes, but are loathe to nerf one of the cool quirks that Overpower has had forever.
• You might MS, OP, OP -> Slam some of the time, but Arms has so much uptime on Colossus Smash, that that rotation can't last for long. We do want Slam to beat OP + HS in the new model. We think it does (and remember we're trying Overpower at a small ragecost), but we'll double check.

Just as a reminder, as I said originally, we're really focused here on simple questions and simple answers. This isn't a good place to attempt to have a dialogue on the strengths and weaknesses of various classes.

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Cyclone range reduced back to 25 yards. (It was 30 yards in an earlier PTR build.)
• Glyph of Cyclone - increases range by 5 yards (rather than 4 yards which was an odd number left over from when it was a % increase).
• Maim damage has been increased by 100%.
• Feral PvP 2pc - now also increases Bear Hug duration by 1 sec.
• Feral PvP glove - has changed. It now increases Maim damage by 100%.
• Balance / Restoration PvP glove - changes have been reverted and once again increases the range of Cyclone by 5 yards.
• Feral PvE 4 pc - now also affects Ravage and Swipe (in addition to Mangle, Shred and FB).
• To explain our Cyclone logic a bit more, we wanted to nerf the ability for PvP. The DR change is a big nerf, but we think it's important. We had previously experimented with increasing range or duration of Cyclone, but were concerned those offset the intended nerf too much.

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• PvP gloves - changed to increase healing by Recuperate by 1% of health.

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• DPS 4pc - Causes Soul Reaper to deal additional Shadow damage to targets below 40% health (instead of 35%). Additionally, Killing Machine increases the crit chance of Soul Reaper and its additional damage to low health targets.

Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• 4 pc - now increases Demonic Fury from all spells by 10% (up from 5% on certain spells).

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• We were concerned that our buffs to haste and mastery were enough to get Arms warriors to regem or be angry about passing on drops to say DKs. That's not the goal. We just wanted to make some of the stats better. We think the changes to Taste for Blood for Arms already make mastery slightly better for them, so we are reverting the change back to 55% for Strikes of Opportunity. (It was 75% in an earlier PTR build.) We also reduced the haste buff from +100% to +50%. It's still a big increase over live.
• Similarly, we were concerned that the changes to Taste for Blood devalued expertise too much for Arms. We changed the Overpower granted by dodge to 1 charge. It's still 2 for using Mortal Strike. However, we also reverted an earlier change that let Mortal Strike proc Overpower even if the Mortal Strike missed.

Editorial note
This may seem like a lot of design iteration, but it's not at all atypical for us. Trying out lots of things is how we narrow in on what we hope are the best changes. We are attempting to expose you to a bit more of the design changes that are normally behind the scenes, as only a minority of our internal 5.2 builds ever make it on the PTR realm. If the constant change gives you heartburn, that's understandable and I advise you to just wait then for the final 5.2 patch notes.

Rapture now reduces the cost of Power Word: Shield by 25% 50% and provides mana equal to 150% 250% (was 200%) of the Priest's Spirit
At the moment (which could still change) Rapture provides a 25% cheaper Power Word: Shield and a 150% mana return on a Power Word: Shield. When we tried PW:S at 50%, it became too efficient to use nothing but PW:S. We aren't trying to kill PoH use completely, just shift to a balance where PW:S and SS are used for absorbs, and PoH is used for healing. Yes, Disc PoH will be weaker than Holy PoH, but that is offset by the incredible benefit brought by absorbs. Please don't interpret this as "Because absorbs are so good and because absorbs are my thing, it is a design failure if I ever cast an actual heal."

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Clarification on the 4pc: It means that if you have a Killing Machine proc up and hit Soul Reaper, that Soul Reaper will be a guaranteed crit, will consume the Killing Machine Proc, and the future Soul Reaper Shadow detonation will also be a guaranteed crit. Basically, Killing Machine will function for Soul Reaper, just like it already does for Frost Strike and Obliterate.

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
For Retribution, we were trying to emphasize what was once the most awesome spell in the Ret arsenal (Divine Storm) while reacting to some of the initial feedback that the first set bonus wasn't exciting. As often happens in cases like this, the players who liked the first set bonus and not the second have now offered their feedback. I want to stress that when this happens it's not a poll or a contest to see who can yell the loudest. We evaluate the feedback we get, weigh the strengths of the various arguments, and come to a decision. For 5.2 we're going to go back to the initial 4 pc set bonus of Templar's Verdict sometimes hitting for Holy damage. I also want to stress that anyone expecting said bonus to be a 20% DPS increase or something are going to be disappointed, so I hope that's not why you liked the bonus.

Incorporating Divine Storm into the single-target rotation, sometimes, is still a neat idea and the kind of thing we might do as a glyph or something in the future.

Um, the revert on the mastery changes, haste back down to 50% (though haste isn't very good for us anyway and is more a fury buff), and the rage cost on OP are all going backwards for arms DPS. I hope there's more changes coming? As it stands we would do far less in 5.2 compared to what we do on live now.
Tuning DPS numbers is one of the last things we do, because it's dependent on all of the other changes being stable. The problems we are trying to solve now are stuff like "How to make Arms use Slam more?" and "How to make rage matter?" Once we get those issues resolved, we can tune up all of the numbers at once (because we'd agree Arms is a little low in PvE).

Myself and many many many rets would be happy to just have these gimmics gone. Please?
We agree that it feels dumb and mandatory. We don't have a global solution to swapping set bonuses pre-pull, but we are trying to implement one. In the meantime, we have a list of specific set bonuses (including the two you mentioned) to discourage for pre-pull.

Drop Skull Bash to 10 energy (currently 15), since we lost of the Glove bonus.
Skull Bash costs nothing on the PTR build. Kick too. That may have missed the patch notes.

Could you please make the bonus work for Aimed Shot (or even Steady Shot) too?
We did so. I must have forgotten to mention it.

Every other melee interrupt is already free (or effectively free for enhance and ret). Only rogues, monks, and ferals have any cost at all. The "resources need to matter more" applies only to Arms warriors, and charging for utility isn't the way to do it, they need to spend rage rotationally.
I would have answered similarly. (And yes, Spear Hand Strike is also free.)

In PvE particularly, we think it's better when players use their utility to help the group at large rather than balking because it's a personal DPS loss to do so. In PvP, you can make more of an argument that choosing to spend resources on an interrupt or on an attack is an interesting trade-off, but the fact is that many interrupts were already free (or so cheap as to be effectively free). There are exceptions to utility being free. Hamstring for example is not, but it also has no cooldown so were it also free it might as well be passive (or macro'd) because you wouldn't be making a decision about when to use it.

While we're on the subject of PoH, though: Is there any way we might be able to get it changed into a smart heal rather than being "group-centric"?
I'll be really frank here. I don't think the group portion of the heal is long for this world. I personally dig it and I feel smart when I see 5 people in a group all at once who need healing. It makes the spell different from other AEs.

On the other hand, it's pretty gamey. (I can only heal these five arbitrary people, why?) Priests feel like they have to ask raid leaders to set up groups with their weird AE spell in mind, which is really unlikely to happen in Raid Finder. It doesn't work at all on encounters like the shrines in Sha of Fear.

We're not going to change it for 5.2. We're probably not going to change it for 5.3. But I sense the writing on the wall here that it won't last much longer. I can imagine a future iteration where Prayer of Healing is the AE equivalent of Gheal and Circle of Healing is the AE equivalent of Flash Heal. (Yes, I know Disc doesn't have CoH - I'm in a really theoretical space here.)

Sorry. I broke my own rule about simple questions and answers. Sometimes I can't help it.

That isn't it at all. Many of those upset about the push back to PW: Shield are those who played Disc Priests during Wrath. We don't want to go back there. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to go back to doing nothing but spamming one spell all day long. That's what it was like for Disc Priests, too. It was a horrible model, but I guarantee you that once we get enough Spirit, we will go right back to doing that because right now it is looking like our most reliable source of throughput.
We agree. Spamming nothing but PW:S isn't fun. We also think spamming nothing but PoH isn't fun. We're trying to carve a niche for both spells, where shields (PW:S, SS and DA (especially with Inner Focus)) are used to shield and PoH is better for healing. Disc won't provide the best healing out there, but that seems fair given that they will still provide the best shielding out there. We'll see fewer Disc priests, but still plenty, and more Holy priests and Resto druids. That doesn't seem like an unreasonable goal....

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Halo - will not longer unstealth enemy targets. That wasn't the use we had in mind when we made it a huge AE.
• Binding Heal - now also heals less for Shadow, the same way Flash does.

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Thick Hide - now also reduces crits from spells.
• Feral PvP gloves - increases the duration of Bear Hug by 1 sec. (I originally typed Bear Huge, which would also be an awesome ability.)
• Feral PvP 2pc - Thick Hide now reduces the chance to be crit by 20%. This is in addition to the Savage Roar effect.
• Feral PvP 4 pc - Now also causes successful interrupts with Skull Bash to reset the cooldown of Enrage.
• Feral PvE 2pc - Redesigned. Now gives your finishing moves a 15% chance per cp to add a cp to your target.

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Deadly Calm - has been removed. We added it in a weak moment - a perfect example of button bloat for limited gain. Our intentions, as always, were noble.
• Glyph of Incite - no longer procs from Deadly Calm. Now procs from Demoralizing Shout.
• Glyph of Overpower - now using Overpower during Die by the Sword increases the duration by 1 sec per use.

Yes I do realize it's 40% execute time, but Unholy mastery does not make it pull that much further ahead of frost in execute, and the KM procs being able to be used on Soul Reaper would make frost Soul Reaper much better.
We changed it to 45% execute range. Remember that Unholy does get a big mastery benefit, as you point out. Also remember that whenever Frost uses a KM to Soul Reaper, then they are not using KM on another attack, so there is some loss there. We think Unholy and Frost benefits are pretty close now, but explain your reasoning if anyone disagrees.

We changed some PvP bonus to benefit abilities for Feral (cats) so we also changed them to offer a Guardian (bear) benefit.

To be complete:

• Feral / Guardian PvP Glove: Increases the damage of Maim and increases the duration of Bear Huge.
• Feral / Guardian PvP 2pc: Increases the duration of Savage Roar and increases the critical strike reduction from Thick Hide.

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Here is our logic on cat movement in PvP. Stacking Feline Swiftness, the PvP set bonus, boot enchants and things like Stampeding Roar and Dash all stacked to be ridiculously fast. We could go back to having all of these things not stacking, but we thought that felt arbitrary and confusing. We didn't want to nerf the talent, so we thought the PvP set bonus made the most sense to hit. Long term, we could consider the movement bonuses stacking additively instead of multiplicatively, but that would do some odd things to snares without further adjustments. We also feel like giving cats Infected Wounds helped a lot with their old problem of not being able to stay on targets.

Keep in mind that some of these changes are attempts to be proactive. We don't necessarily believe that Feral and perhaps Shadow are overpowered in PvP today. However if we're successful in getting mages and warriors down to a more balanced spot, we're concerned Feral and Shadow may be the next two specs that feel broken. We are also mindful that if you knock off the top thing on any list that the next item on that list becomes the new top thing.




Patch 5.2 Reputation Changes

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
What I would love to see is more choices to farm the reputation for factions, deffo not a tabard again I agree on that! But mayby a choice between dailies and something else
For 5.2 you will be able to champion a faction and earn rep with them on your first heroic and scenario of the day

So we can assume that only one dungeon or one scenario will earn you rep?
As the PTR Patch Notes read currently, it's the first dungeon and first scenario. Of course, things might change, but that's the plan right now.

The answer was/is so blooming obvious, you never had to re-invent the wheel, just put the old one back on - simply having both at release (instead of removing tabards) - Blizz could of scored a blinder by satisfying everyone - missed opportunity by not keeping tabards with the current daily system on release, missed it again in 5.1 and instead opt for a watered down fix in 5.2.
If one of them is the obvious path to get it done faster, the developers have seen over the years that the players will take that path, even if it's something they just don't like doing (which is probably why some people feel dailies are mandatory, because they'd like to spend their valor points on that gear rather than using the item upgrade system, perhaps because the'll spend them better there).

Also, keep in mind that in 5.2, valor gear will have a reputation requirement, but this reputation won't be earned from daily quests (which will also be available and it's a different faction).

Also, before I forget, remember that in 5.2, you'll be able to receive Work Orders in Sunsong Ranch from all accross Pandaria, and completing a work order will earn a reputation boost with the issuing faction. So it should help reduce the burden of doing dailies for those of you that don't enjoy them that much.

1) is the championing rep a flat rep you get at the end that's comparable to what you would get from doing all dailies that day?
2) does the dailies faction have reputation rewards as well? and are those intended as a sort of catchup for new players/alts?
3) if the valor rep is related to the raid (most likely it is), can you also get it through LFR?

Great questions! I do not know at this time, but we'll try to gather that information and share it as soon as possible.




Patch 5.2 Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Patch 5.2 PvP Gear Changes Feedback
Totally agree in principle,but I'm not sure we need to keep a hurdle in, and adversely affect the PvP game, just to give people something to shoot for. We'll have a cosmetically different enchant available at 2200 in 5.2, and going along those lines we're looking at what potential future cosmetic rewards we could add for various ratings in the future. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

LFR Loot System Feedback
1) Show the loot everybody wins, and show people their own rolls. Both pieces of information will make it "feel" like a closer thing.
We're still not convinced this is the right way to go about it. Our initial approaches are going to be based around your personal drops, win or lose, feeling more satisfying. If it still feels like killing bosses and seeing what you get doesn't feel good, we'll continue to evaluate.

2) Give every player a hidden variable of their chance of getting loot, and for each failed roll increase that variable by a small amount. Say, 2%. If you go an entire week of full LFR with no loot, your next roll would get a +32% roll.
I made a recent post that covers a bit of this, and nods at some future possibilities as far as ensuring LFR runs feel rewarding. We're not looking to make LFR drops guaranteed, that kind of reliable gearing is what Justice and Valor are for not boss fights, but certainly the opposite of guaranteed can be just as bad. It's something we're looking at and talking about internally, we just don't have anything specific to share right yet.

Aside from that, we call the Elder Charm 28.50 bag the fail bag because it fails as a consolation prize in generating excitement, or even feeling like a consolation. If you don't win a piece of gear, fine it happens, but at the very least spending a charm should give you something to look forward to. Getting a bag, anticipating what might be inside, and having the possibility of being excited about what it contains is the goal. That change will be in 5.2. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 5.2 Failbag Changes
i think the chance of loot in LFR need to be prio to how many times you have done a boss ! so the more times you have done the boss the chance of getting items chances getting higher!
On Patch 5.2, the bag containing gold will also have other goodies added to it. Hopefully it'll serve to lessen that feeling of walking out the LFR with empty hands (and some gold).

The developers are also discussing some long term solutions about the consistency of drops on LFR, but unfortunately, at this time, we don't have anything specific to share. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Pet Respawn Change in Patch 5.2
This particular change (Any pet that has been killed in a pet battle will now never respawn), is not related the pets you use in the battle, but the pet you fight against out in the wild.

So, your pets will be unaffeceted and not going anywhere if they do die. (Official Forums)

Patch 5.2 PvP Gear Changes Feedback
Yea this is still a big mistake Blizzard are making, they are still amusing that people are motivated by gear in PvP, this hasn't been the case (largely, naturally a very small % still do care) for a very long time now. This is actually something that we are also looking into. We are aware that pure performance enhancers are not something that is of a large interest to the majority of PvP'ers. We are investigating ways of implementing more vanity rewards for participating in PvP combat.

Then you could also throw inv arious special Mounts or Pets between the 2000-2700 range or something.
One issue that can arise with the rating requirements on rewards with the new MMR inflation system is that rating is going to inflate throughout the season for those that continue to compete. This could make rating requirements such as those you have mentioned much easier to attain. As said however we are looking into ways to implement more vanity rewards into PvP and we will update you with more information on this when it becomes available.

But honestly, why should someone with inferior skill to myself have the same gear? This basically puts us on the same level.
I have to ask; why is it that you feel entitled to have better gear than someone of lesser skill and as such bridge that gap between you both even further, giving you an even more distinct advantage?

If players are able to fight with an equal footing in regards to gear, then you will be able to tell who has more skill as the better player will obviously be able to attain more rating. This change should excite you with having a better chance to show your stuff and surpass 2.2K rating, push yourself beyond your known limits and try for the best you can!

So we've nothing to aim for now ?
Whoever said that? You have plenty to aim for, the sky is the limit. You still have the elite gear to aim for, it simply does not come with a rating requirement now. You can also set your own goals rather than only aiming for those we already laid out before you.

I think the new conquest system will promote players to start late in the season. This way you will save money and the catch up rate will be crazy high.
Far from it, you only get the 1000 points per week missed minus your already attained Conquest points. If you played throughout the entire season then your weekly cap would be higher than that and as such you should have more conquest points than those who start late. The main difference now is that catching up if you started later in the season should not be as difficult.

all we want is something to show off, maybe like teh challenge mode gear, if you get 2.2k rating you get a set of gear with no stats thats purely for transmog. and this thread then dosent need to exist.
As has already been mentioned even before this blog, more vanity rewards for PvP'ers is something that we are currently looking to implement. We will provide more information on this when it becomes available.

We, who are about to farm, salute you!
How will it be any different to the farming that you are currently doing? You farm up your honor gear while buying conquest items with what you earn and then once you get full honor gear you go all out with farming your conquest points for gear.

Remember also that the rating inflation system might mean that the average MMR and team rating could increase, this means that the amount of Conquest points that you can earn each week may go up too. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Ring of Peace Feedback
We are very aware that Ring of Peace is quite an overpowered ability right now and we are still working on it quite heavily. Expect to see more changes coming for Ring of Peace soon. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Arenas and Gear
Yeah, I miss the times when you could actually outplay people and instantly tell if someone was a terrible player.
It is still entirely possible to outplay others in Arena even if their gear is better. Gear is not always a deciding factor in a battle; although it's definitely something that assists you in winning. If you are playing better than your opponent you should have higher, if not the same, survival, damage and/or healing and as such you will still have a good chance of winning even if your gear is worse. This is not to say that gear does not help in deciding the outcome of a battle, but it is not the only factor as your skills can make up for a lack of gear.

Just so you know though, the disparity in stats on the different levels of PvP gear is something which we are currently looking into. We have a blog that’s coming soon which will talk about all of the changes to PvP gear we have planned for 5.2 and beyond. These changes will hopefully be major quality of life improvements for PvP'ers, helping with both mid and late season entry as well as the large difference in power between Honor and Conquest point gear. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)




Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Challenge Mode Feedback
Current challenge modes do normalize people's gear and levels down, so current challenge modes will always be the same (or near same) difficulty into the future. Not exactly what you mean, I know, but that kind of tech does already exist.

Challenge modes are already the most efficient way to get Valor, which is pretty rewarding. If we put an item at the end of it, either it's going to be low enough ilvl to be worthless to the types of people tending to run challenge modes (progression raiders), or it's going to be a BiS, at which point challenge modes become required for progression, tuning suddenly becomes a really big deal, etc. etc. It's not the intent of challenge modes, and not somewhere we're planning to take them. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

A Discussion of Gear Scaling
This is not an announcement or pertinent information about 5.2.

A player asked this question in the set bonus / class thread. I really wanted to answer it, but I also said I wanted that thread to be about short questions and answers. So I am going to violate the spirit of that rule but not the letter by addressing it here.

The problem I have is the feeling that you, GC, and your development team, are downplaying the importance of scaling in that tuning. Scaling of secondary stats is important, not just for pure damage reasons, but to maintain consistent damage relative to other classes across a wider range of item levels.
Okay. Scaling.

As a sweeping generalization, players worry too much about scaling. Back in vanilla and maybe BC, it was a huge concern. Some abilities scaled with attack power and some just did flat damage. Guess what happened when gear level increased?

Now days (unless I am forgetting something) every ability scales with attack power or spell power, meaning it scales with the primary stats that we slather on your items. If not then it at least scales with weapon damage, which is also just a function of ilevel. An ability that scales well with crit and haste and mastery will do even more damage as ilevel increases, but you have to consider the deltas we're talking about here. If your entire raid improves every single item in a tier (which doesn't always happen), your ilevel might go up by 13 ilevels. Let's be charitable and assume an ilevel is a 2% DPS increase. That means someone with awesome scaling might get a 26% DPS increase compared to someone with no scaling. But we already established all abilities scale with primary stats. So even the low end guy is going to get some scaling. Furthermore, we're typically talking about a player with one strong secondary stat and two weak secondary stats. So he gets a lot from the primary, less from the good secondary, and even less (but not zero!) from the bad secondaries.

Furthermore, specs that tend to not scale as well with their secondary stats will scale better with their primary stat. To use the warrior as an example (since that's what kicked this off), Fury scales well with secondary stats, but Arms scales well with Strength. We also think that's interesting because it makes you look at your gear and really think about the stat allocation instead of "Plate? Go." On top of all of that, you can reforge and gem to lean towards stats that are the best for you, which downplays the impact of bad scaling even more.

So again let's be charitable and say that we're talking about a max delta of something like 5-10% between someone who scales awesome and someone who scales poorly at the very end of a raid tier when everyone is completely geared, which by the way, is probably when you don't care so much about being able to kill those bosses since they're by definition all on farm. Encounter mechanics can have a much bigger impact on DPS than 5-10%.

Now this might still be a problem if we didn't make any adjustments throughout an expansion and the poor-scaling guy just fell farther and farther behind. But we don't do that any longer. Every tier these days is a new chance for us to readjust the numbers and make sure that even if there is a stat scaling issue that we can compensate for it.

Furthermore, I'm not sure why you'd assume that we check DPS only at the current ilevel. We check for ilevels that won't exist within the 5.0 time period. On occasion we have tested with stupidly theoretical item levels of 10,000 or more just to see what happens to the curves.

It also doesn't help the conversation that the word "scaling" gets misused a lot. The question above uses the term the way we would, but misuse is sadly pretty common. "Our scaling is bad" gets used as a synonym for "My dps is lower than I want" or even just a vague "My dps needs to be overpowered now, because of, you know, scaling."

TLDR: many players worry far more about scaling than they need to. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Is Samwise Still Around?
He's art director on StarCraft II, so most of his time is spent there, but he still does some concepts and bits for Warcraft now and again. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Daily Quest Feedback
Questing is an essential part of World of Warcraft. In the past, we've opened up hubs of daily quests tied to a specific storyline, but not necessarily integral to that expansion's theme. This time around, we worked to expand the storyline by coupling the lore of Pandaria and the various zones you adventure in with the daily quests that become available. The ultimate goal is to provide players who aren’t raiding, and who do enjoy questing, something to do at max level beyond grind heroics. One of the main complains in Cataclsym was there was nothing to do, you sat in Stormwind and queued for stuff. Daily quests, if you want to do them, do in fact lead to getting more people out and about in the world. Giving people something to do outside of instances.

We still very much believe players do not have to partake in daily quests to progress. Items that can be purchased from a Quartermaster can easily be matched by items earned through raiding and PvP. What it all boils down to is each individual’s play-style. There are those who will only want to run dungeons and raids; those who only want to PvP; those who only like to work on their farm and do some Pet Battles; those who only like to earn achievements, and any combination in between. We’re trying to appeal to millions of different types of players as best as we can, and we understand that not every piece of content or decision is going to be everyone’s favorite. That’s why to a large degree you can pick and choose what you want to do. It may not always be the most efficient, but the option is there. You've specifically seen that we’re listening to feedback in the addition of the Grand Commendations which not only benefit your alts but make the Revered->Exalted run that much shorter. You’ll also see some changes to reputation gains in Patch 5.2 where a player can champion a faction and earn reputation for their first heroic and scenario runs of the day.

On a personal note, every single person I work with is absolutely, 100% dedicated to their job, to this company, and to our games. Your concerns are our concerns. We may not always agree with you, and you may not agree with us, but in those disagreements we can try to have a conversation and come to understand the motivations of each other. The goal here is to better explain why we’ve designed the game the way we have, rather than disagreeing to disagree. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Flying Mounts Feedback
In spite of your firm belief that you feel flying mounts are detrimental to gameplay
No one ever said they are detrimental to gameplay, or they're being removed, or we hate flying mounts, or any of the other things people have inferred for no good reason. What I said was that experiencing a world directly from your character to the earth beneath it, and approaching questing content, is not served well by being able to lift off and set down wherever you like. In most cases we've relegated 'non-flying' to new characters experiencing an expansion for the first time, and then sometime later given them a way to give their alts flying in a quicker manner. In some cases, such as the Isle of Quel'danas back in BC, and now on the 5.2 Thunder King island, we've made a conscious effort to design a no-flying area to present that content in a different, and we believe, more intimate way. That's our job as game designers and world creators to define the restrictions and rules to create what we feel crafts the best experience. You can disagree with the restrictions and rules that define what World of Warcraft is, and we can have a conversation on the pros and cons (and certainly there are both), but let's be careful not to take things out of context and jump to extremes.

Can you start spending as much time making a conscious effort to make content that is based around FLYING characters, even though it may be more difficult?

It is very clear that there are atleast as many people who DESPISE travel by ground. The only reason that the "questing experience is better from the ground" is because that is the way you make it - so make it differently.
All of the level-cap content and locations (daily quests, hubs, etc.) are designed around the knowledge that you have a flying mount available. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

LFR Loot System Feedback
The LFR loot system works extremely well for what it's intended to do, it sees a ton of traffic, and gears people up in end-game content that just wasn't possible even a year ago. By all accounts it offers people not able to commit the time, or have the resources, to raid. That in and of itself is a major accomplishment, and the intent of the LFR system. Regardless of your personal circumstances, you can get in there, see the story, experience most of the content, and get some decent items. But I think the rub is the expectations it sets. It looks like a raid, and it smells like a raid, but there's fundamental differences in how it's perceived due to the format. For traditional raiding you get together with your guildies and friends, you struggle on bosses, wipe after wipe, and finally through teamwork and perseverance you overcome the obstacle, loot drops, and even if you don't win a roll you feel like you've made a meaningful contribution to your team and your chances at success later through the overall gearing up of your raid group. In LFR the entire dynamic has to change because you're being matched up semi-randomly with other players. Because of that there is no feeling of helping your team get better, you enter the queue alone, and it's mainly about personal goals to gear up, which then maybe help you in coordinated raids later. You're in there for loot for yourself, and because of that there's less tolerance for overcoming obstacles, so encounters are much easier, and the loot system is per-person and not a communal distribution.

As others have noted the chance to get items in LFR versus a traditional raid scenario are actually higher, but that doesn't change the expectations of people jumping into LFR that this should be a system that provides more consistency. Whatever the underlying reason is for that, I'm not totally sure it matters beyond there is an expectation difference between traditional raiding and LFR. It's something we're keeping an eye on for potential tweaks in the future. We have tech for quests that increases your chance for a quest item to drop if you haven't gotten one recently, and so that's something we're at least beginning to think about and how that kind of consistency system could translate into things like the LFR. If nothing else tweaking drop rates on prior tiers when a new tier hits is pretty low hanging fruit on at least ensuring people can more easily get those last few ilvls so they can queue for the new tier. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mists of Pandaria and Alts
Sure go ahead and lie but please try not to make it that obvious. If you find them useful and enjoyable, you must be flying around in orgrimmar/stormwind waiting for something to happen because that's the only thing i know is worse than questing. And how dare you defend the content??? We both know it's crap and the one who created it deserves to hear it.
Sorry but you can't call me a liar because you don't like my opinion. If you don't like questing, that's all fine (in fact, there's plenty of players out there that don't like having to level when a new expansion is launched), but you can't pretend your opinion is an universal, undisputable truth and everyone else is just a liar.

LFR requires you to have ilvl460, which you can get by completing all the Dread Wastes quests, some Townlong Steppes rewards, and if you're still lacking gear for some reason: heroics/scenarios. You don't need to dailies to get in.
Yes I'm quoting myself!

As some people have pointed out, you can't reach ilvl 460 in Dread Wastes/Townlong Steppes (and I totally made a mistake in that sense). What I was referring instead, was 5-man heroics. My points stands still, you don't need dailies to gain access to the LFR, and chain running 5-man heroics will be faster too since you don't need a 463 item on every slot to access LFR, but you won't get it either just with Dread Wastes/Townlong exclusively. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Updating Older Dungeons
Thanks for your suggestions, we’re aware that some dungeons are being somewhat missed out by players while levelling up, and I agree, they’re missing some really great PvE content.

I believe that one of the possible issues is that some of those instances are probably not tuned with the new players in mind, they were instances that were added late on previous expansions and so they are supposed to be harder and they wouldn't be a good experience for players levelling up for the first time. Tuning older dungeons (revamping quests, tuning bosses/mobs, items) is something that takes time and currently the focus is on level 90 content, but don’t worry, devs are aware of this, if there are any changes we’ll let you know. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Converting Justice Points Into Elder Charms
I would like to be able to convert justice points into coins.
Justice points are the lower currency, useful for those looking to gear up for heroics, pre-raid stuff really. While I can see how JPs can build up for players who don't want to spend the surplus points on various items such as heirlooms, legacy gear for transmog purposes or trading in for honor points to get PvP gear, it doesn't make much sense to me to allow this lower currency to be used as a way to get the higher level gear, that's the issue I see with it. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)




Defiance Beta Key Giveaway
Curse is giving away US and EU beta keys for the ongoing beta weekend.

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Curse Weekly Roundup
This week's news talks about the Video Games Rating Enforcement Act, Xbox 720 and PS4 specifications, Path of Exiles open beta, Halo 2 PC online multiplayer shutdown, and your weekly Game Forecast!

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